Using Technology to Enhance ESL Learning

Facebook
came gently into my life back in 2006 when one of my very socially-inclined
students sent me an invitation; I resisted this invite for months. It reminded
in my mailbox though while I pondered for weeks whether or not I should give up
my freedom to privacy. I knew what facebook was about; I had heard stories
about this social space, the wild land of the
20 something generation. But, eventually, facebook and I, we
ended up in a relationship, like many relationships - a stormy one.

The issue whether or not facebook could be more than just a social space has
popped up again and again. Back in January and February, during the EVO2008
session we were running on the uses of social tools in teaching EFL/ESL, SMiELT,
our discussion got somewhat sidetracked and a number of us ended up chatting
about the possibilities of using facebook with our
students to teach English. The second time facebook came back into our
discussions, this time with a big bang, was the infamous Ryerson scandal when we all learned that students
still cheat – how surprising – this time though they were using a new social
medium to do that (the life of a cheat note had come to a timely end, it
seems). One of the engineering students got charged for opening a study
group which, in fact, was a place to exchange solutions for their chemistry
class. This past June, facebook became a discussion topic once again in a
course I was taking at YorkU.
Last night, July 2, I went on facebook after a month-long, self-imposed
isolation. The truth was that over the months I had become an addict of facebook
and I needed to see

1.if my life
can still exist with it

2.what
happens to facebook when one stops facebooking

3.decide if
I wanted to use facebook as a teaching tool

The answers
are:

1.my life
got much better without it

2.facebook
dies a natural death when one stops facebooking (the same as it is with virtual
gaming: “The world exists because of you.”)

3.no, I
would not use it for educational purposes.

This last
realization is quite contrary to my stance on the issue at the beginning of the
year.

Why on earth
would anybody even consider using facebook to teach anything? In one of the
posts during the June discussions with my class, the justification for using
facebook in education came from the observation that the site is used extensively
by the Generation Y crowd.

"Michael
Tracey, a journalism professor at the University of Colorado, recounts a class
discussion during which he asked how many people had seen the previous night's NewsHour
on PBS or read that day's New York Times. "A couple of hands
went up out of about 140 students who were present," he recalls. "One
student chirped: 'Ask them how many use Facebook.' I did. Every hand in the
room went up. She then said: 'Ask them how many used it today.' I did.
Every hand in the room went up. I was amazed."

Given then that
the attention of the 20something crowd seems to be centred around facebook
nowadays, the suggestion from one of the discussants was, “Perhaps it would be
better if educators could see the value of using facebook as a tool to
encourage subject discussions beyond the classroom.” Yeah, right!

After the
EVO2008 sessions, Mary asked if I would be interested in
contributing to a discussion on using facebook in our teaching; I
enthusiastically said yes. It was kind of a Marxist crusade
– I had deeply-ingrained high ideals in regards to facebook; I believed that
the 20something crowd was ripe for an educational revolution, a revolution in
which facebook would be turned into a productive teaching tool. Marx’s
ideals came to an end in Eastern Europe in 1989 with the
Velvet Revolution after years of trials; my ideals came to an end
even before the revolution took place.

When I was considering the use of facebook for education in January, I was
mostly driven by my personal conviction that education can and should take
place anywhere. I had this highly ideal conviction that it is my responsibility
to stir my students towards learning wherever they are. I think I was a bit
naive then thinking that I can inspire the 20something to use his/her personal
facebook space to less futile goals than an exchange of seemingly nonsense and
hardly readable posts on their Walls or an exchange of hugs, which, in my
opinion at that time, served little, if any, purpose. I did decide though to
stand back and observe this social space to get the feel of the place; I looked
at their Wall posts and Super Wall videos, read their daily updates, saw how
their friendship grew from day to day, and how each facebook site is different
as it reflects each person’s individuality. I did the same: wrote on my
friends’ Walls, scribbled crazy updates at 2 am in the morning, and looked for
friends to add to my site. I personalized my page – I made it my own to reflect
who I am.

Then, it hit me. I woke up at 4:45 in the morning one day and came to a
conclusion that facebook IS really a SOCIAL SPACE, and that my students really
need to and want to use it to SOCIALIZE. Over these months of intense facebooking, I had
realized that it would be unfair and futile to impose my high educational
ideals on my students on facebook. I realized that trying to stir them towards
learning inside this very social and very informal environment is wrong.

One of the arguments put forward in our
discussions was that because technology is such a big part of their life, it
could be utilized to stir them towards learning. But that’s so wrong. Facebook
is a social place and they should use it for social purposes. It's THEIR place,
THEIR space, THEIR party. Making them use this very social space to learn
things is like crushing a party on a Friday night. One of the other teachers
pointed out that it is incredible how often students use facebook. And, that’s
true; yes, they do. But that’s because they need to. They need to exchange
nonsense videos, the need to send each other hugs, and they need to have a
place to vent their exasperation about education (how telling is that!) in
desperate messages in which they complain how much studying sucks. Taking away
this SOCIAL space from them and turning it into an EDUCATIONAL space would be a
crime.